Sam H. Shirakawa's Books

The Devil's Music Master

The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler

By: Sam H. Shirakawa

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The Devil's Music Master

The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler

By: Sam H. Shirakawa

From 1922 until his death in 1954, Wilhelm Furtwängler was the foremost cultural music figure of the German-speaking world, conductor of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. But a cloud still hangs over his reputation, despite his undeniable brilliance as a musician, because of a fatal and tragic decision. Wilhelm Furtwängler remained in Germany when thousands of intellectuals and artists fled after the Nazis seized power in 1933. His decision to stay behind earned him lasting condemnation as a Nazi collaborator--"The Devil's Music Master." Decades after his death, Furtwängler remains for many not only the greatest but also the most controversial musical personality of our time. In The Devil's Music Master, Sam H. Shirakawa forges the first full-length and comprehensive biography of Furtwängler. He surveys Furtwängler's formative years as a difficult but brilliant prodigy, his rise to pre-eminence as Germany's leading conductor, and his development as a musician, composer, and thinker. Shirakawa also reviews the rich recorded legacy Furtwängler documented throughout his forty-year career--such as the legendary Tristan with Kirsten Flagstad and the famous performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1942 and 1951. Equally important, Shirakawa goes backstage and behind the lines to explore how the Nazis seized control of the arts and how Furtwängler single-handedly tried to prevent evil characters as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring from annihilating Germany's musical life. He shows how Furtwängler, far from being a toady to the Nazis, stood up openly against Hitler and Himmler--at enormous personal risk--to salvage the musical traditions of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Shirakawa also presents moving and overwhelming evidence of Furtwängler's astonishing efforts to save the lives of Jews and other persecuted individuals trapped in Nazi Germany--only to be proscribed at the end of the war and nearly framed as a war criminal. But there was more to Furtwängler than his politics, or even his music, and we come to know this extraordinary man as a reluctant composer, a prolific essayist and diary keeper, a loyal friend, a formidable enemy when crossed, and an incorrigible philanderer. Numerous musical luminaries share their memories of Furtwängler to round out this vivid portrait. Based on dozens of interviews and research in numerous documents, letters, and diaries, many of them previously unpublished, The Devil's Music Master is an in-depth look at the life and times of a unique personality whose fatal flaw lay in his uncompromising belief that music and art must be kept apart from politics, a conviction that transformed him into a tragic figure.

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542

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199923418

ISBN 13

9780199923410

Ultrasonics International 87

Conference Proceedings

By: Sam Stuart

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Ultrasonics International 87

Conference Proceedings

By: Sam Stuart

Ultrasonics International 87 contains the Proceedings of the Ultrasonics International Conference and Exhibition held at London, United Kingdom on July 1987. The conference discussed and reviewed some of the developments in the field of ultrasonics. The compendium consists of over 150 contributed papers, four invited papers and three plenary papers. Topics discussed include generation of unipolar ultrasonic pulses by signal processing; scattering of longitudinal waves by partially closed slots; piezoelectric materials for ultrasonic transducers; and measuring turbulent flow characteristics using a multi- dimensional ultrasonic probe. Fiber optic sensors, medical imaging and inverse methods, and laser generation of ultrasound are covered as well. Physicians, technicians, researchers, and physical scientists will find the book insightful.

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974

Publisher

Elsevier

Published Date

ISBN 10

1483140539

ISBN 13

9781483140537

The Devil's Music Master

The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler

By: Sam H. Shirakawa

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The Devil's Music Master

The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwängler

By: Sam H. Shirakawa

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

542

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199923418

ISBN 13

9780199923410

Book's by Sam H. Shirakawa

The Devil's Music Master

The Devil's Music Master

Ultrasonics International 87

Ultrasonics International 87

The Devil's Music Master

The Devil's Music Master

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